


Rhapsody in You

by AstridContraMundum



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: But it's T in Morse's mind, M/M, Maybe for Strange too, it's up to you, rated G as far as Strange is concerned, they were roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 12:56:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21253751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridContraMundum/pseuds/AstridContraMundum
Summary: Morse thought that things could not possibly get any worse.And then Jim Strange began playing his trombone.





	Rhapsody in You

They stood on a rooftop overlooking a skyline of domes and spires—dreams made of marble and stone—rising into a sky as deep as the blue of Miss Thursday’s eyes.

“Come closer,” she said, looking back over her shoulder, her face bright with a complicated smile.

Morse could scarcely believe it.

After all of this time, after all that had transpired… 

Was she ….

Was she . . . _flirting_ with him?

He returned her smile as best as he could.

“This is as close as I get,” he said. “You come here.”

He had thought that he was being clever—it was a metaphor, really, his fear of heights—a metaphor for all of his larger fears—the fear of saying the wrong thing, or of doing the wrong thing—of the crippling awkwardness that so struck him whenever she drew near.

Because sometimes, it seemed, he just could not say them, the words that he wanted to say.

And sometimes he_ could_ say them, but not in the manner in which she needed to hear them.

_“Marry me,” he said._

And still, he could not bridge that gulf, could not help her to understand.

But all that was forgiven now. Now, they were both here, and she was smiling at him, with a bold new gleam dancing in her eyes.

And for a moment, he had dared to hope: Perhaps she had finally come to understand him. 

He was an awkward sod, really.

But Miss Thursday was not. 

Perhaps she would take one step toward_ him_, perhaps she might help him out of the spillage of half-said or wrongly-said words that threatened always to make him to feel as if he were drowning.

And then she said it. 

“There’s someone I want you to meet. Her name’s Claudine. She’s a photographer.”

And Morse felt as if he was falling, as if the blood was draining right out of him, as if he was plummeting off of the rooftop, even though he had remained safely away from the edge.

It was not the words she said that struck him so, but the realization that he had managed to misread the situation so completely.

He didn’t understand. He would never understand.

It was all hopeless, pointless. He was destined to share the fate of Ronald Beavis, destined to die alone in a flat filled with second-hand opera records and cheap Scotch to dull the loneliness.

Sans teeth, sans love, sans everything.

He and Miss Thursday had been like dancers at a Scottish reel, circling and circling around one another, only managing to throw out a hand to catch the other’s at the moment that the other had spun and turned away.

Their fingertips might brush, but then the piping music led them on.

It was all just too . . . complicated, somehow. Even though, for the life of him, he didn’t know just why.

And so then there had been Claudine. A relationship, at last, that he might fall into easily.

She didn’t expect anything from him.

She didn’t …. expect anything from him.

And now she had found a war preferable to his company.

It was difficult to imagine a more brutal judgment than that.

So now, here he lay, stretched out on the sofa in a house he shared with Jim Strange, staring blankly at the ceiling, turning over each mistake in his mind, tormenting himself over each and every misstep.

And he should have screwed up his courage and stepped closer.

And he should have screwed up his courage and said “don’t go.”

Morse lay there, replaying all of his many failures, over and over, until his thoughts circled like a movie reel.

Until he was beginning to enjoy it a little.

So. Now he was a masochist, to top all.

He was just thinking that things could not possibly get any worse—that there was no lower ring of the Inferno, no further depths to which he might fall—when the godawful screeching started, the perfect soundtrack to hell: Jim Strange, sitting at the table in the next room, warming up on his trombone.

Morse scowled.

God, it was an abomination, that awful racket, a searing series of shrieks that shattered Morse’s last worn nerve.

“Must you?” Morse called.

“What’s that, matey?” Strange replied.

“It’s a little late for that noise, surely!” 

But Strange only laughed. “It’s not half eight. Besides, I thought you liked a bit of music.”

Morse snorted. “Music, yes, but not that hellish cacophony. Sounds like the sirens at the nuclear power plant, out at Bramford.”

There was no answer, then, but only the scuffle of footsteps, of a chair being pushed back from the table. And then, Strange was there, standing in the throughway between the dining and the sitting area, looking straight at him as he deliberately raised the instrument to his lips.

Morse steeled himself for a blast, certain that Strange, annoyed, was preparing to play the wiseacre, certain that he was preparing to blow him away with an ear-ringing blare. 

He felt his body tense, like a taught string, steeling itself for the worst, for the knife of one fierce, long blade of C sharp.

But then, it started—the first shivery, achingly slow and golden notes of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and instantly, Morse felt himself go utterly still with the shock of it.

And then, suddenly, he _wasn’t_ a string pulled too tight, or a brittle branch ready to snap, but rather a shimmering pool of water, bright with the sun, bright with the rise and fall of the music rippling from Jim Strange’s trombone, as it followed the course of the buoyant melody, the course of that paean to hope, a hope that, however illusory, was hope just the same.

The song could not help but remind Morse of Joss Bixby, who had been both the host of glittering, sophisticated parties and the keeper of a childlike faith—a faith that held that love must always win at the end, that a sky full of stars was promise enough that anything was possible. A dream Bixby held undaunted, even until the end.

Morse was just considering how odd it should be that Strange—so straightforward and prosaic, with the earnest, broad face of the copper that he was—could play with such complexity and yearning and beauty, when the tempo sped up again, and Morse was once more lost, lost to a song that he didn’t believe in, a song full of diamond bright optimism and longings fulfilled.

He closed his eyes and felt the tension falling and falling away from him, and he _was_ falling and falling, sinking luxuriously into Strange’s bulky old couch as if it was made not of fabric and springs, but of clouds.

With his eyes gently closed, Morse was free to follow every movement of the slide of Strange’s trombone as it glided back and forth—slowly, tauntingly, back and forth—until his body was tingling, as if he was made not of matter but of electricity.

Until he was no body at all. Until he _was_ the sound, and _only_ the sound of Strange’s perfect notes—the slow ones, drawn out like a dream, and the short, quick ones, soft like the patter of rain.

And then, suddenly, there was silence.

Morse opened his eyes to see that Strange was watching him, a perplexed look on his face, as if he thought that he was sickening for something.

“You all right, matey?”

Morse turned his face on the throw pillow to look up at him.

“Don’t stop,” he said, and a part of him was horrified to hear that his voice sounded just as jagged as it had when he had said those words to Claudine, only a few weeks ago, as they lay, limbs entangled, on the floor of her flat during a thunderstorm.

If Strange noticed anything there in his face, in his breathless voice, he didn’t say.

He only smiled, and looked at him steadily, an amused light in his eye; then he raised the trombone to his lips, keeping his eyes focused only on him, as if in a parody of a serenade. And continued playing.

Morse closed his eyes once more, and stretched, and arched his back, and sank further into the clouds that were the beaten cushions of Strange’s old couch, not caring in the slightest that Jim Strange, of all people, was standing there and watching him, as he became totally undone.

**Author's Note:**

> I meant this as a one shot, but I can certainly see all sorts of awkward situations arising from this point on....!
> 
> Just as Morse becomes attached to their cozy arrangement ... Jim starts dating...... Joan.


End file.
